52

52

C ONSTANCE PEERED AT THE coin in her hand: a gold doubloon struck during the Spanish empire, bearing a date of 1699. She had found it wedged in a crack of her temporary quarters and appropriated it as a sort of good luck piece. She turned it over in her palm. Its cool heaviness was soothing to the touch—but it did little to ease the agitation she felt.

She assumed—hoped—that Aloysius had found Binky, allowed himself to be captured by Leng's men, and was now headed back to the mansion—as they had planned in their meeting at the Tenderloin bordello. She'd successfully poisoned Leng—a private plan of her own she had told neither Aloysius nor Diogenes about, for obvious reasons. The man was doomed: it gave her immense satisfaction to know that no matter what he did, no matter what happened to her, he would be dying in agony within four to six days. But poisoning him had started a clock ticking, and it meant both she and Pendergast had a limited period to complete their combined assignments: free her siblings and get them to safety before Leng's initial symptoms kicked in. These symptoms could manifest themselves as early as tomorrow, January 9. As soon as the poison began to work on Leng and he realized what was happening, he would kill them all. But he'd already killed Mary —which, almost subconsciously, had narrowed her own goal to one overriding thing: destroying Leng. Hence the irreversible poison. Aloysius and the others—they must have known when they came through the portal that the chances of survival were slim. Now, with the machine broken, all their fates were even less certain.

She stared at the coin. Her feeling of unease was not going away. She'd lived in this house—or at least its simulacrum—for a hundred years, and she trusted her instincts. She decided a reconnoiter would be in order, to see if conditions had changed.

Grasping a lantern, she rose from the cell and moved out into the corridor leading to the secret staircase that connected this sub-basement lair to the basement proper. She cautiously ascended the stairs and paused at the exit, peering through a pinhole to ensure nobody was there before she opened the door.

She froze. There was someone. She could see a dim lantern moving down the far end of a basement corridor. Soon, two more appeared behind it.

She watched as they approached. Slowly, the face of the leader became visible. It was Decla. She and the others were clearly searching for something: examining the walls, tapping on them, occasionally holding up lighted matches to test the flow of air.

Constance shrank back. The secret door into the sub-basement was well hidden—and securely locked—but would it stand up to such close examination? Despite the thickness of the walls, she could hear the tapping move closer, and closer, until it reached the hidden door. There the tapping hesitated briefly. Then it started again, now going up and down, then sideways. Clearly, they had noted a change of tone.

This was followed a few minutes later by a low scraping: a knife being used to examine the spot for cracks or unnatural edges. Then a sudden, excited murmur of voices, and the tapping immediately accelerated.

They had found the door to the sub-basement caverns.

More scraping and chiseling as they uncovered the hidden seams. They weren't going to be able to open it right away—the inside of the door was shielded in solid iron plate—but it would be only a matter of time before they broke through and uncovered the sub-basement—and her lair.

She waited, ear pressed to the iron of the door. More chiseling, hammering, chatter—and then all went silent.

They had gone off to fetch heavier tools.

She had to act immediately. When they got the door open, they would eventually find her hiding place, and everything she'd stored within it. This left her with a choice: she could flee the mansion via the watery tunnel, leaving everything behind—or she could flee into the house itself, hoping to remain hidden in its secret passageways and hollow walls long enough to accomplish her objectives.

In reality, this was no choice at all. To follow through on her end of the plan required her presence—here. To run away was to fail herself and the others, and to perish… sooner rather than later.

Extracting a heavy key from her pocket, she unlocked the door and cracked it open, easing her lantern into the now empty hallway. They would be coming back momentarily—she had to move fast.

After shutting the door and locking it again from the other side—given the scrapings and chisel marks, there was no longer any point in trying to disguise it—she crept along the basement corridor. With her lantern partially shuttered, she moved in the direction opposite Decla's path of return. It would take the gang an hour, perhaps longer, to break through the door and explore the sub-basement, which should give her time to locate a new bolt-hole from which to operate in the time that remained. Of course, the water entrance—the intended escape route—was almost certain to be discovered. They would have to leave the mansion through the main floor—a dangerous complication.

She moved along the maze of corridors into an abandoned and unstable area of the basement, far from Leng's labs and collections. A small cave-in marked the opening. She made her way over the rubble and continued along in silence, looking for a place to hide. There were rows of ancient storerooms, some with rotting casks that once held amontillado; stacks of old bricks; hardened sacks of cement; shovels and trowels and other rusting tools.

She heard a distant sound and froze, quickly shuttering her lantern. Listening intently, she identified it as a girl weeping.

In utter darkness, she stole toward the sounds, occasionally touching the basement walls for orientation, her progress aided by her preternatural night vision. Slowly, the sounds grew more prominent, and the darkness diminished—she was approaching a section of the vast, never-mapped basement that was reachable from another passage. Someone had been imprisoned down here—and recently. And as the weeping grew nearer, she realized it was Binky. This meant Pendergast had completed his part of the compact; he had located Binky, been captured by Leng, and already been brought back to the house. But as she turned a corner, and the weeping grew louder, she could hear another voice murmuring words of comfort.

In a moment of profound astonishment, followed instantly by joy, Constance recognized the other voice. It was her sister, Mary. Alive. She was whispering words of comfort to Binky. And then another voice chimed in—Joe.

The shock of this discovery, with the simultaneous rush of gladness and fear she felt, was so powerful that she had to steady herself against a nearby wall. Mary wasn't dead after all. Mary was alive.

But now all her siblings were prisoners.

It had been a cruel deception of Leng's—and she had to temporarily put aside her emotions to think the consequences through. If Binky and Mary were here, Pendergast had succeeded. And if Joe was here, too, then Leng had discovered D'Agosta's hideaway. D'Agosta, if still alive, would probably be imprisoned with Pendergast in another section of the mansion.

She forced herself to pause a moment, to refrain from acting on instinct. Her natural impulse was to rush to them, free them, take them to safety. But without more intelligence of the other developments that must also have occurred, that plan would surely fail—especially now, with the basement crawling with Decla's gang, which meant Leng was on high alert.

Even as she pondered this, she heard other voices coming down the hallway—loud, male—and then saw a dim light, shining from around the corner of the path opposite to the one she'd taken. More of Leng's confederates. She shrank back into a nearby storeroom, flattening herself against the inside wall.

She heard the men bang on the metal bars of the cell door. One shouted Mary's name. There was a defiant yell from Joe and what sounded like a tussle; Binky sobbed loudly and Mary began to scream.

"Don't take me!" she heard Mary cry. "Oh God, don't take me there! "

Another angry shout from Joe, followed by the sound of a blow, and then the clang of the iron door. Mary's voice, still crying out, began to fade as she was manhandled down the hall and away.

A new shock flooded over Constance. Mary was alive… She had not factored that into her plans when she vengefully poisoned Leng. But more immediately, she knew from the echoing sounds exactly where Mary was going: Leng's new operating theater, built in this very basement.

If Leng had not killed Mary for her cauda equina, then what had he done? There was one obvious answer: he'd been using her as one of his guinea pigs, testing an accelerated version of the Arcanum on her. And since she herself had given him the proper formula, it would no doubt work—Mary would be showing no signs of aging.

And Constance recalled something else. When Leng's guinea pigs began to present like Mary—indicating a successful formula had been reached—Leng had the first of them dissected, looking for internal malfunctions caused by the elixir but not obvious externally.

This meant that Leng was preparing—right now—to autopsy her sister, Mary… alive.